Thursday, October 22, 2015

Game Avalache 2015: Guide to the Fall Game Rush

In a few short weeks, we enter the craziest time of the year—the avalanche known as the fall game releases. The sheer amount of games releasing in the period of one month is unbelievable. Most of them of huge AAA titles, like Halo 5, Black Ops III, Fallout 4, and Star Wars Battlefront, that will easily make a big dent in your wallet. With all these great games permeating store shelves the world over, the temptation of buying them all is definitely there. Unless you have a whole lot of disposable money, you sadly can't afford buying every game outright. For those money conscientious people out there, I'm here with some tips and tricks to help you through this trying time.

Pick and Choose
With new games selling for 70 to 80 dollars a piece, it's just too expensive to be buying every major release nowadays. Add in the nearly 20 hour plus campaigns and/or extensive multiplayer suites of modern titles, there is no way one person can beat each game in time for the next big release. There is too much coming out and not enough time or money to play them all right now. With all that in mind, best to stick with one or two new titles this holiday season and get the most out of them rather than trying to cram them all in.

Use Alternative Funding
Money can be an issue, especially for students and those dealing with debt. While it is important to budget your money in order to afford the necessities of life, the urge to get the latest and greatest game can be hard to overcome. If you need to pick up a game at launch with limited funds, it might be best to look at your backlog and see if there are any games you are willing to part with. Since most retailers nowadays accept games and other pieces of media for trade-in credit, trading in older titles is a viable solution for funding new game purchases.

Forewarning: don't go in expecting to get more than five dollars a game. Video game prices are in constant flux, so a title's trade-in value can change weekly based on factors such as rarity, popularity, or age. Unless a game's rarity or popularity trumps its age, the older the title is, the lower its resell value will be. Also the resell price of yearly releases, especially sports games, plummets once the newest entry hits store shelves. So it's best to trade those titles in before the new game comes out. Plus, keep an eye out for trade promotions because they will get you more money for the games you're looking to trade.

Play the Waiting Game
Good things come for those who wait. This adage is especially true when it comes to video game shopping during the holiday season. If you don't feel like buying a game within the first week of release, it's better to just wait. Sales happen regularly over the course of the last two months of the year. You might just find the game you're thinking of buying for 10 to 20 dollars off (sometimes more on Black Friday or Boxing Day) or somebody may give it to you for Christmas. Holding off your money spending urges might lead to the best rewards during this expensive season.

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Bit by Bit: September 2015

September was an eventful month. I went to Fan Expo, spent three days powering through Mario Maker for a review, started classes for another year, and ended my post-secondary career in the span of 30 days. The last one might seem drastic and surprising, but it has been surprisingly refreshing. A great weight lifted off my shoulders when I handed in the withdrawal form. School took up every facet of life for the past five years, so to finally be done is surreal. Now, I got more time to play games!

Enough about me, we got games to talk about especially with the fall game rush in full effect. For the uninitiated, the fall game rush is the incredible amount of games that release from September to November each year. And I bet if you're a self-respecting gamer, you picking up at least one brand new title in the next few months. I know I'm buying quite a few.

Game of the Month
Super Mario Maker would be the easy choice for Game of the Month with its robust level editor and insane amount of user-created content, but I haven't spent as much time with the game that I originally thought I would. Mario Maker is one of the best games on the Wii U; it just hasn't grabbed me in the way I wanted it to. Outside of the first weekend owning the game, I've only picked it up a handful of times over the last few weeks. Let's just say seeing little reaction to your uploaded levels can be disheartening.

While Mario Maker didn't grab all my free time, Yacht Club Games' free expansion for Shovel Knight sure did.

In Plague of Shadows, you take control of Plague Knight as he collects the essence of his fellow knights in order to create the ultimate potion. Instead of relying on a shovel to bounce off enemies like a pogo stick, Plague Knight must use bombs, spells and his charge launch ability to reach the chambers of his former comrades. Although you play through the same levels that are in the main campaign, using Plague Knight's unique abilities makes each level play in a whole new way. Plus as an added bonus, each level has special area that only Plague Knight can get through. Plague Knight may be tricky to control at first, but you will definitely get the hang of his arsenal after the first few levels. In addition to the brand new campaign, Plague of Shadows adds a challenge mode with over 40 challenges to complete as Shovel or Plague Knight.

As an expansion, Plague of Shadows offers more content than most game expansions or DLC. Plus, it's all free for anybody who buys or already owns Shovel Knight! If the other planned expansions for the game are just as good as Plague of Shadows, Shovel Knight may be one of the top games for years to come.

Most Anticipated Games of the Month
I can't nail down my most anticipated game of September since I have three big game purchases during the first three weeks of October. Very similar to those picking up all the big AAA releases in November, October is my big rush of games. Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash drops Friday, October 9th followed by Yoshi's Wooly World a week after that and The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes just a week later. With all those games, I'm going to have quite a bit to talk about this upcoming month. No promises, but maybe I will get around to posting some reviews for them in the near future.

In all seriousness, I am really looking forward to playing all these new Nintendo games. Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash is going to be to closet thing to a new Castlevania until Bloodstained comes out in 2017, Yoshi's Wooly World might just be the best Yoshi solo outing in decades, and The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes takes the fun of multiplayer Zelda and melds it with the expert dungeon design of traditional 2D Zeldas. Also two out of the three games come with adorable amiibos, which is always a plus in my books.

Video of the Month
Words will not do this video justice. Just sit back and enjoy the spectacle that is the Japanese launch trailer for Tearaway Unfolded. I promise you, it's one hell of an acid trip.

Sunday, October 4, 2015

First Byte: Fan Expo 2015 Gauntlet

Early September, I went to Fan Expo Canada for a day. Aside from exploring the massive show floor and buying a few cool items on sale, I spent the majority of my time playing upcoming games. Actually, it was more like standing in line to play said games. Much like last year. there were well over 30 games at Fan Expo for all to play from big AAA titles such as Assassin's Creed: Syndicate to smaller titles like Cuphead. I always go in dreaming to play every game on the show floor, but I can only get in a quarter at best. This year, I played 10 games in total.

This time around I'm changing up the structure of the Fan Expo Gauntlet. Instead of taking two parts to outline every game I played, I'm going to highlight three titles. These are the titles that I got more time to play and can dissect for your pleasure. With how poorly some demos were managed by volunteers, I just couldn't extract enough from them to fill a paragraph. For example, I played Transformers: Devastation for only enough time to say the combat is exactly the same as Bayonetta just with some third-person gunplay thrown in the mix.
Yo-Kai Watch
To my surprise, Nintendo had a lot more games at their booth than the three games advertised (Splatoon, Super Mario Maker and Yoshi's Wooly World). One of the titles available to play on 3DS was the newest sensation out of Japan, Yo-Kai Watch. The demo I played gave me a good impression on the game's combat system, which is pretty different from most JRPGs on the market.

There are no random encounters in Yo-Kai Watch, you literally chase down wild yo-kai by keeping your cursor over them. Once the yo-kai are caught, you engage in combat. Combat consists of spinning a wheel on the touch screen to alternate between the six yo-kai on your team and activating special touch screen specific activities in order to unleash special attacks. Outside of lining up the correct elements to maximize damage and special attacks, normal attacks automatically occur at regular intervals.

For the 15 to 20 minute demo, I found the combat really fun and engaging alternative to the traditional RPG combat systems, but I can see it getting tedious over the course of a 40 hour playthrough if this is all Yo-Kai Watch offers.
Star Wars Battlefront
Ever since EA and DICE released the first slew of information on the new Star Wars Battlefront at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim, people have been tirelessly debating over the game's content or lack thereof and its similarities to Battlefield. The gameplay footage revealed at E3 did quite a bit to fan the flames, but there were still some doubters. I will say this: you will have no doubts when you get your hands on the game. My friends and I walked away from the demo at Fan Expo astounded at how amazing it was.

The only mode available to play was Survival. It is Battlefront's version of Horde mode as you and a teammate are tasked with battling through waves upon waves of Imperial forces on Tatooine. The first few waves consist of just Stormtroopers, but as the waves go on, the difficulty goes up at a gradual yet challenging pace by throwing AT-ATs and shocktroopers your way. For somebody who can't hold their own in contemporary shooters, Battlefront made me feel like an all-star. The controls felt perfectly tuned to deal with everything that was being thrown my way. There were a couple waves where I was the last man standing and the tight controls were the only thing that allowed me to pull through.

Although the demo consisted of only one mode, the superb controls and the game's ability to accurately emulate the world of Star Wars has me highly anticipating playing Battlefront later this year.
Star Fox Zero
Most games I played at Fan Expo left me feeling optimistic about their final release. Sadly, I can't say the same for Star Fox Zero. While I will still buy this game early next year, I have a bad feeling that the game is going to alienate a lot of people because of its unique control scheme, much like Kid Icarus: Uprising before it.

Star Fox Zero has you using the analog sticks to control the Arwing and the motion controls in the Wii U gamepad to aim your weapons. This control set-up works during the on-rail segments. but completely falls apart when you enter all-range mode. The reason for this occurrence comes from the all-range mode's reliance on pinpoint accuracy to dispatch enemies. If you played Splatoon, you would already know that this control scheme is no where near accurate and Star Fox's focus on it feels counter-productive. Transforming into the walker did alleviate some of the targeting problems with particular enemies, but the walker's controls felt rough around the edges as will.

After playing Star Fox Zero, I am happy that Nintendo delayed the game until early 2016 because it gives Nintendo more time to refine the controls for the game. While Star Fox Zero has the potential to breathe new life into this struggling franchise, a polarizing control scheme might just ground the Star Fox team for good.